Into The Fire

A visit to the library then our next stop, Gizbert adopting a disguise as a contract remains in force for his termination, courtesy of the Old World Librarian Brotherhood with whom he had a slight disagreement concerning the proper punishment for overdue books.*

*Gizbert had borrowed a book on the mysteries of the Dewey system, erroneously thinking the system referred to was one for defrauding casinos. Unfortunately by the time he had discovered his error (always a slow reader), he discovered another interesting gem of information, namely the persistence of capital punishment for book theft in certain corners of the Empire

We were frank with the librarian,* explaining how we were linking Baker Schmidt’s unfortunate demise with his quest after certain fragments of forbidden heraldic lore. A scrawled note, the name Hollenbach gave us the clue we needed: Our conversation and bookwork revealed that the Hollenbachs were a noble dynasty: Of vampires. But they were hundreds of years dead, what was happening now?

*Well, a disguise is no good without a pseudonym

Before we could continue this train of thought, we were derailed by passing local big wig, Lord Von Speer. He announced that his brother had fallen into the clutches of a blood cult and he was hiring muscle to free him from their clutches.

*Luckily, as usual we were available cheap

We met up with his retainers within the hour as dusk fell,* having gathered up our weaponry and drunken dwarf. Eleven of us in all trailed out of the village arriving at the Garden of Morr, home to the final resting place of the Von Speer’s. To be less cryptic, it was a large crypt, and we dauntlessly entered, passing between a double row of entombed ancestors of our new best friend.

*Our timing – great isn’t it?

A trail in the dust and ominous dark stains led us into a large cavern, filled with cloying darkness. Our torches sputtered feebly as we cautiously descended stairs into the huge open area.* Gizbert, as is his wont at such moments took to the shadows and in the gloom found his way across to a body on a raised dias.

*Borri was so cautious that he fell all the way down them with a sound that could have woken the dead (and indeed later did)

Having established that the neck punctured corpse was indeed the brother Von Speer, Gizbert was less happy to meet the last of the Hollenbachs.* He rose and muttered a self pitying doggerel slash threat, which impressed Gizbert so much that he left at considerable speed, graciously allowing two of Lord Von Speer’s top henchman the honour and glory of the kill.

*We hope

So approximately thirteen nano seconds later as the bodies of the our crack but somewhat deceased bodyguards hit the floor,* we realised that we may have Bittenov, sorry, bitten off, more than we could chew. Our rapidly sobering dwarf was not sobering quickly enough and charged recklessly into attack and I felt bound to charge in after him. Gizbert meanwhile found his exit blocked by a bunch of zombies.

*Not necessarily all at the same time, some elected to do so in stages, for example, head, limb, main part of body, another limb, and so on

We fought on, Larry throwing some light on the subject and it was immediately apparent that we were coming second; second in a way that would have seemed familiar to General Custer at the Little Big Horn, Von Paulus at Stalingrad, the Spartans at Thermopylae and Harold Godwin at Hastings.

I fell insensible, my armour shredded by the nifty blade work of our deadly opponent and the ceiling was suddenly alive* with movement as eight feral vampire beasts swarmed down upon us. Surely this was the end?

*Or possibly dead

But the vampire beasts were as interested in our opponent as us, in fact as they tore him apart it quickly became obvious that we were merely what our American cousins refer to as collateral damage, and the vampire controlled zombies suddenly collapsed even more lifeless than usual as our formidable foe was trounced, and they bore the body away and out, leaving us insignificant annoyances to lick our wounds.

And so we are left, battered and beaten up, to again reflect on our sorry fortunes. I am completely knackered and but for his trusty parrying staff Larry would not be much better. Borri’s only injury was caused by the daemon drink and Gizbert remains in treatment for a serious yellow streak that appears to be tenaciously deep rooted and possibly incurable. We did find the famous missing chicken, clearly our vampiric friend had been partial to small bite sized snacks, but who killed Schmidt? The mystery remains, as does our greater quest…